Dynamic tracking of reporting of cellular service outage and method of operation of the same

Abstract

Embodiments are directed to systems and methods for dynamically sensing and calculating the time remaining until a report of an interruption in cellular communications within specific areas must be made to an entity. Various regulations by different entities, whether the FCC, city, or state public safety organizations require reporting of cell phone outages according to their respective operational needs. The present embodiment provides techniques for dynamically calculating the time period remaining before reporting of an outage must be provided to a particular entity. A method is provided for receiving into the system the parameters for the regulation under consideration and an area of interest to be considered. The system will retrieve data from the various databases to determine whether or not the cellular service complies with the regulation under consideration. Calculations are dynamically made over time to determine if reporting under the regulation is needed.

The invention claimed is: 
     
         1 . A method of dynamically tracking a cellular service outage within a selected area comprising:
 receiving a selection of an area of interest from an operator;   displaying identification data of the selected area of interest to the operator;   outputting operational state data that includes a number of cellular subscribers, cell tower systems and public safety offices within the area of interest;   determining an average number of subscribers per tower within the area of interest based on the operational state data;   receiving an indication of the number of non-operating cell tower systems within the selected area over a first time period;   calculating a first value for an amount of time remaining until potentially affected users within the selected area exceeds an affected user threshold time based on the number of non-operating connections and the average number of subscribers per tower within the area of interest;   receiving an indication of non-operating connections to cell towers within the selected area over a second time period;   calculating a second value for the amount of time remaining until the potentially affected users within the selected area exceeds the affected user threshold; and   reporting a cellular outage in the selected area if a sum of the first and second time periods exceeds a reporting time period threshold and if the affected user time is above the affected user threshold time.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the step of receiving an indication of the number of non-operating cell tower systems within the selected area over the first time period includes:
 receiving a report from a cell tower operational tracking database. 
 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 2  wherein the cell tower operational tracking database is a separate database from a first database. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 3  further including the step of:
 inputting, by an operator, the number of non-operating cell tower systems within the selected area over the first time period into the first database. 
 
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 3  further including the step of:
 inputting, directly by a software data transfer, without assistance from an operator, the number of non-operating cell tower systems within the selected area over the first time period into the first database. 
 
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 1  further including:
 identifying each cell tower system that provides cellular service to a first public safety office within the selected area; and 
 reporting a local safety outage to the first public safety office if all cell tower systems that provide service to the first public safety office are out of service for a second selected time period threshold. 
 
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 6  wherein the first selected time period threshold and the second selected time period threshold are the same amount of time. 
     
     
         8 . The method of  claim 6  wherein the second selected time period threshold is shorter than the first selected time period threshold. 
     
     
         9 . The method of  claim 1  further including:
 inputting, by an operator, into a first database the value of the first time period after receiving an indication of the number of non-operating cell tower systems within the selected area during the first time period and prior to the step of calculating a first value for the amount of time remaining until the potentially affected users within the selected area exceeds an affected user threshold time. 
 
     
     
         10 . The method of  claim 1  further including:
 after outage time period has passed, terminating the first time period and starting the second time period based on a software flag, without input by an operator. 
 
     
     
         11 . The method of  claim 1  further including:
 requesting to receive an indication of non-operating connections to cell towers within the selected area over a second selected time period and concluding the first time period if the amount of time remaining until the potentially affected users within the selected area is less than an alert threshold of time. 
 
     
     
         12 . A method of dynamically tracking the time remaining before report must be made of a cellular service outage within a selected area comprising:
 receiving a selection of an area of interest;   outputting operational state data of a first number cell tower systems within the area of interest at first time;   receiving an indication an outage reporting time based on a first set of conditions within the selected area during a first time period;   calculating an amount of time remaining until a report is to be made of an outage occurring based on the first set of conditions;   outputting operational state data of a second number cell tower systems within the area of interest at second time;   receiving an indication an outage reporting time based on a second set of conditions within the selected area during a second time period after the first time period;   calculating an amount of time remaining until a report is to be made of an outage occurring based on a combination of the first and second set of conditions.   
     
     
         13 . The method of  claim 12  wherein the first set of conditions includes the number of public safety answering points within the area of interest. 
     
     
         14 . The method of  claim 12  further including:
 requesting to obtain operational state data of the number cell tower systems within the area of interest at second time when the amount of time remaining until a report is to be made of an outage occurring based on the first set of conditions is less than a threshold amount of time. 
 
     
     
         15 . The method of  claim 12  further including:
 requesting to obtain operational state data of the number cell tower systems within the area of interest at second time when number of cell towers in operation has change by a threshold amount. 
 
     
     
         16 . The method of  claim 15  wherein the threshold is a percent of cell towers that have transitioned from non-operational to being operational. 
     
     
         17 . The method of  claim 12  further including:
 obtaining a number of cellular subscribers within the area of interest at a first time as one of conditions in the set of conditions.